The offices of the Portland Women’s Crisis Line hadn't been updated for 20 years. It had an unfinished basement and needed a conference room and a meeting room built.

The operation was temporarily relocated to implement a complete remodel of the building. PWCL returned to a refurbished space after the eighth week of construction. Making the building more energy efficient and user friendly was the main goal, along with finishing the basement to create a conference room and a meeting room for client services.

Much had to be done. To start, Sustainable Adaptations remedied a land use issue with the city. Then worked with a designer and architect, walked the building plans through the permitting process, sought bids from contractors, negotiated the contract, then worked closely with the general contractor on scheduling and project management.

The first and second floors have new electrical wiring, plumbing, beautiful American Clay Plaster walls or new Yolo paint. There are new oak hardwood floors, blown-in Airkrete insulation and new furniture throughout. The office spaces were reconfigured to accommodate a larger stairwell to the basement and to provide better community space and privacy for offices.

The daylight basement was retrofitted to withstand earthquakes, has a new wheelchair accessible street entry, stained concrete floors, new walls to make a conference room, a meeting room, an additional work station, a sorting area and accessible bathroom. Exterior walls are insulated, new windows provide energy efficiency and a network server room and mechanical room were created.

Lighting fixtures throughout the building were updated to energy efficient T-8 fluorescent lights where possible and other fluorescent fixtures were added as well.

Sustainable paints, lumber, flooring, insulation and building practices were used throughout the project. Only a pickup truck load of waste went to the landfill, everything was reused or recycled.

The co-founder of American Clay Plaster, which is the product we used on many of the walls, was in Portland and visited the site. She was quite impressed with the work of our volunteers and our plaster contractor, From These Hands.

Many vendors, contractors and volunteers worked on the project: Athena Electric did the electrical work, Ecohaus provided the plaster, paint and flooring, Portland Tradesmen did the basement framing, Jak Bartels Construction did built-ins and kitchen counter tops, Desia Gray did the design and Laurie Maglioni was the architect who redesigned the stairwell. Lion’s Pride Moving relocated the offices and then brought PWCL back to their refurbished home. Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc had its apprentice class rebuild the wheelchair ramp and many women, over several volunteer work parties, did plastering and painting. Luke Richardson assisted with finishes. Cedar Nickels and Natalia Kay took care of the punch list. The Rebuilding Center donated some materials.

It was a fantastic project and had enough LEED credits to be certified platinum if we could have budgeted to pay for the certification process.

This project is an example of the many facets of a project Sustainable Adaptations can manage.